ependence. His merits as well as his defects
annoyed them equally: his "Lettre contre les Spectacles" had exasperated
Voltaire, the stage at Deuces as in danger. "It is against that Jean
Jacques of yours that I am most enraged," he writes in his correspondence
with D'Alembert: "he has written several letters against the scandal to
deacons of the Church of Geneva, to my ironmonger, to my cobbler. This
arch-maniac, who might have been something if he had left himself in your
hands, has some notion of standing aloof: he writes against theatricals
after having done a bad play; he writes against France which is a mother
to him; he picks up four or five rotten old hoops off Diogenes' tub and
gets inside them to bay; he cuts his friends; he writes to me myself the
most impertinent letter that ever fanatic scrawled. He writes to me in
so many words, 'You have corrupted Geneva in requital of the asylum she
gave you;' as if I cared to soften the manners of Geneva, as if I wanted
an asylum, as if I had taken any in that city of Socinian preachers, as
if I were under any obligation to that city!"

More moderate and more equitable than Voltaire, D'Alembert felt the
danger of discord amongst the philosophical party. In vain he wrote to
the irritated poet: "I come to Jean Jacques, not Jean Jacques Lefranc de
Pompignan, who thinks he is somebody, but to Jean Jacques Rousseau, who
thinks be is a cynic, and who is only inconsistent and ridiculous. I
grant that he has written you an impertinent letter; I grant that you and
your friends have reason to complain of that; in spite of all this,
however, I do not approve of your declaring openly against him, as you
are doing, and, thereanent, I need only quote to you your own words:
'What will become of the little flock, if it is divided and scattered?'
We do not find that Plato, or Aristotle, or Sophocles, or Euripides,
wrote against Diogenes, although Diogenes said something insulting to
them all. Jean Jacques is a sick man with a good deal of wit, and one
who only has wit when he has fever; he must neither be cured nor have his
feelings hurt." Voltaire replied with haughty temper to these wise
counsels, and the philosophers remained forever embroiled with Rousseau.

Isolated henceforth by the good as well as by the evil tendencies of his
nature, Jean Jacques stood alone against the philosophical circle which
he had dropped, as well as against the Protestant or Catholic clergy
whose c